DAVESPRITE: i guess she left already?DAVESPRITE: maybe there was an emergency somewhere and her doggy senses led her thereDAVESPRITE: maybe someone fell down a wellDAVESPRITE: what do you think john do you think our teen parents fell down a wellDAVESPRITE: nah i sincerely doubt that any of them would be that patheticDAVESPRITE: whatever it was it must have been important enough for jade to ditch us like thisDAVESPRITE: either that orDAVESPRITE: maybe she was that desperate to finally get away from meDAVESPRITE: between you and me johnDAVESPRITE: i didnt really handle things with her as well as i could haveDAVESPRITE: oh well maybe real dave will treat her betterDAVESPRITE: or not i dont knowDAVESPRITE: i did her a favor cutting bird dave out of her lifeDAVESPRITE: nobody really deserves bird dave as a boyfriend or a friend or anything its like getting one of the janky daves from the bargain bin at the dave depotDAVESPRITE: or one of the marked down daves the day after national dave dayDAVESPRITE: its like somebody taxedermized your dave and expected you not to noticeDAVESPRITE: "feathers what feathers haha no that dave is totally normal and ok"DAVESPRITE: you should just go back to being bros with real dave when you see himDAVESPRITE: ill be fine ill just flap around and do my thing aloneDAVESPRITE: im completely alright with that at this pointDAVESPRITE: we had our ups and downs john but all in all it was cool to go on this road trip with youDAVESPRITE: there were some times manDAVESPRITE: the timesDAVESPRITE: im telling you they were unrealDAVESPRITE: i bet you people would pay good money to see every second of the madcap stunts that were going down on this ship basically 24/7DAVESPRITE: if hulls could talk wowDAVESPRITE: haha just joking it was seriously boring as hellDAVESPRITE: but i mean it was still cool so yeahDAVESPRITE: heyDAVESPRITE: whats that ring anywayDAVESPRITE: ive seen you with that ring before and i guess i was just likeDAVESPRITE: ok john has a magic ring for some reasonDAVESPRITE: no need to mention that or anythingDAVESPRITE: but where did you even get itDAVESPRITE: you cant even hear me you got your snooze on so hardDAVESPRITE: aint gonna wake you up to hassle you about no ringDAVESPRITE: i probably should have said all this stuff when you were awake anywayDAVESPRITE: like the stuff about friendshipDAVESPRITE: fuck it ill just leave another one of my patented magic notes taped to your shoe or your cowlick or somethingDAVESPRITE: my magic notes rule ill miss leavin em taped on stuff

So what do we call this pause? I've been batting ideas around all day. We could go with the obvious choice, the MINIGIGAPAUSE. Or maybe, MEGAPAUSE 2: BACK IN THE MEGASADDLE. Or if that makes too much sense, we could always settle on the MICROTERAPAUSE. As you can see, there are so many incredibly intelligent and meaningful things we could call this pause. Deciding how to refer to the pause is an exercise that I will leave to the reader. Feel free to discuss the matter with friends. Or strangers. Anyone who will listen really. If they start to run away, I strongly recommend you chase them.

Why don't we say that A665 begins on 4/13. That's a fun number that we all can get excited about. I have a lot of catch-up work to do between now and then. Not the least of which is drawing the actual content to be posted. But also a lot of gamedev work. Game production is rolling pretty hot right now. Stuff is being churned out almost faster than I can keep track of. Did I mention? I accidentally started running a game studio a little while ago. Whoops, sorry about that. There are all these people being paid to make things happen, and I have to be like "Yeah, keep doing that stuff, everybody." It's getting pretty easy to lose track of how many people work for What Pumpkin. My last estimate was somewhere between 30 and 1000. The true figure is a very frisky moving target.

A6A6A5, a.k.a. Caliborn's Masterpiece, is actually done. It's probably better to hold off posting it until 4/13, when more content will soon follow aftewards. I am sure pausing on that note for months would mess with your head a lot more than the note we're already pausing on. I sometimes feel I have at least a modest responsibility to manage your sanity. It'll be tough sitting on this content though. Tougher than sitting on all of A664 for the better part of a year. I don't think it is out of line to describe it as the best material this website will ever exhibit. It will be all down hill from there, in every direction. Even up.

Speaking of sanity management, way back when, I was pretty on the fence about posting A664 spaced out over months like I did, vs. all at once. Doing the latter in hindsight probably would have been a fucked up thing to do to the internet though. The GAME OVER fallout alone was a bit much as it was. Including it in tandem with the rest of it? Not sure what to make of that. Let's review the CONTENT CRUSH that would have entailed. Bad Anime -> Game Over -> Sadstuck -> Lowas Quest -> 100 retconned panels of oil -> A bunch of other shit -> Punky Serket -> Fantroll Storytime -> 8 password pages -> The Kiss On Horse Mountain -> and finally -> The Punchline. You know, that's an awful lot of baloney to publish. I think the fell-swoop reaction to all that would have been quite a thing to behold, but also, perhaps an irresponsible thing to do to a hapless fanbase after a year in hibernation. I'm told that in 2015, young people are heavily susceptible to "the feels", and trifling with those forces could be injurious to their future development. Wait, did that just sound like something your grandpa would say? Mother fuck, where did I put my cane. Oh right, I snapped it in half from shaking it at the sky.

I may have been in the process of making a point there, but we're going to have to pick this up another time. The comic isn't going to pause itself!!!

Over the last couple months, I have been surreptitiously collapsing several update horses into single, bigger horses. This means A6A6I4 is going to end a little sooner than previously advertised. Same total page count, but finishing sooner. Please consult the important horse calendar below.

So what happens when A6A6I4 is done? I'm not quite sure yet. I'm still working on everything that comes after that. I've written it mostly, but haven't drawn anything yet. There will almost certainly be another pause, but I'm not sure how long it will be yet. I will let you know after 1/19.